How to Measure AI Visibility Across LLM Platforms

What it means to be visible online is changing. While traditional SEO rankings still matter, AI platforms now shape how millions of people discover and research brands.

ChatGPT processes over 2.5 billion queries monthly, and it’s predicted that AI traffic to websites will surpass traditional search traffic in 2028.

When your potential customers use these platforms to ask about your industry, is your brand showing up? What’s your AI visibility?

The tricky part about measuring your AI visibility is that it’s not like traditional search rankings. You can't just check your position for a keyword and call it done. AI platforms pull information from multiple sources, synthesize responses, and present brands in entirely new contexts.

That's where AI visibility metrics and measurement tools come in.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the essential metrics for measuring AI visibility. You'll learn what to track, how to interpret the data, and how the data looks in our tool of choice.

AI Visibility Metrics

Before diving more into some of the individual metrics, here's an overview of the key measurements that matter for AI visibility tracking:

Metric	What It Measures	How to Interpret
Share of Voice	Your brand's mention frequency compared to competitors	Higher percentage = stronger competitive position
AI Brand Visibility	Percentage of relevant prompts that mention your brand	Shows overall presence across AI platforms
AI Mentions	Raw count of brand mentions in AI responses	Indicates reach level and indicates growth
AI Answer Citations	When AI platforms link to your content as sources	Measures authority and content quality
AI Rankings	Your position when listed among competitors	Shows relative ranking within AI responses
AI Sentiment	How AI platforms describe your brand (positive/negative/neutral)	Reveals brand perception and positioning
AI Referral Traffic	Website visits originating from AI platforms	Tracks actual traffic you’re getting from AI
AI Conversions	Goal completions from AI-driven traffic	Measures ROI and business impact

These metrics work together to give you a complete picture of your AI visibility performance. While traditional SEO focuses on ranking for individual keywords, AI visibility requires tracking how your brand appears across hundreds of different prompts and contexts.

The best way to monitor these metrics at scale is through enterprise-level tools like Semrush Enterprise AIO, which tracks your brand's performance across major AI platforms and provides competitive benchmarking data.

1. Share of Voice

Share of voice measures how often your brand appears in AI responses compared to competitors when people ask relevant questions. It's reported as a percentage, where 100% would mean your brand dominated every analyzed prompt.

When potential customers ask AI platforms about solutions in your industry, how much of the conversation do you own? That’s your share of voice.

In Semrush, share of voice is located in the AIO Overview report alongside other metrics for measuring your visibility in LLMs like sentiment, share of voice vs. competitors, number of prompts you’re showing up for, and more.

How to use share of voice in your LLMO (large language model optimization) strategy:

• Identify competitive gaps. If your share of voice drops during certain periods while competitors grew, analyze what they did differently. Did they launch new content? Get featured in major publications?
• Track optimization impact. Share of voice responds to content improvements, PR efforts, technical optimizations, and any other LLMO strategies you’re working on. Monitor changes as you work on your strategies to measure whether or not they’re making a difference.
• Benchmark against industry leaders. The brand comparison share of voice over time chart shows you where you sit amongst the other brands in your space. If a competitor maintains a 60% share of voice while you're at 20%, what are they doing with their content strategy that you could take inspiration from?

2. Brand Visibility

AI brand visibility measures the percentage of relevant prompts that mention your brand at least once, regardless of position. The frequency of brand occurrences shows how often your brand appears across all tracked AI responses.

When people ask AI about your industry, how often does your brand get mentioned at all? That’s your brand visibility.

In Semrush, brand visibility appears in the main AIO Overview dashboard alongside other key metrics. In the example shown, the brand has 29.2% visibility with a downward trend, meaning it appears in roughly 3 out of every 10 relevant AI responses.

Enterprise AIO also provides AI-generated strategic recommendations to improve visibility based on your AI visibility benchmark vs. your competitors:

How to use the AI brand visibility metric in your LLMO strategy:

• Identify coverage gaps. Low brand visibility means you're missing from important industry conversations. Focus on creating comprehensive content that addresses common customer questions, pain points, and use cases in your space. Mine your competitors’ content to see what conversations they’re showing up for that you’re absent from.
• Track campaign impact. LLMO strategies that you’re working on like PR campaigns, thought leadership content, and product launches should increase your brand visibility. Monitor this metric to measure the reach of your awareness-building campaigns.
• Analyze trend patterns. A downward visibility trend indicates competitors are gaining ground or you're losing presence in key conversations. Use this as an early warning to investigate what content or strategy changes are needed.

3. AI Mentions

AI mentions track the raw count of how many times your brand appears in AI responses across all monitored prompts. Unlike percentages, this gives you the total volume of brand references.

In Semrush Enterprise AIO, you can track prompt trends showing how your mention volume changes over time.

How to use AI mention volume in your LLMO strategy:

• Scale content coverage. Low mention counts might mean you're missing from important industry conversations. Create comprehensive content addressing more customer pain points and use cases in your space.
• Track campaign impact. PR campaigns, product launches, and content marketing efforts should increase your mention count. Monitor this metric to measure the reach of your awareness campaigns.
• Analyze mention trends. Look for patterns in which types of content or topics generate the most brand mentions, then create more content around those high-performing themes.

4. AI Answer Citations

AI answer citations occur when AI platforms link to your content as a source in their responses. This differs from mentions, which simply reference your brand name without linking to your site. The number of citations you have shows how authoritative and trustworthy AI tools consider your content to be.

Citations are an indication of content quality and topical authority. When LLMs and AI search engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity cite your content, they're validating your expertise to the users seeking information.

Different AI platforms handle citations differently. ChatGPT often provides numbered references at the end of responses. Google's AI Overviews include source links throughout answers. Perplexity displays citations as clickable footnotes. Claude typically mentions sources within the text but doesn't always provide direct links.

Semrush Enterprise AIO tracks citations through its Source Impact Analysis report, showing which URLs get cited, their page types (blog, review, support, etc.), brand portrayal (favorable/unfavorable), number of mentions, and authority scores. This data shows you which of your pages are getting noticed by AI.

How to use AI citation data in your LLMO strategy:

• Amplify high-performing content. Pages that earn citations are your gold standard for what content you should create that attracts AI attention. Create more content on similar topics or expand existing cited pages with additional depth and expertise.
• Monitor content types. Track which formats get cited most often. Maybe it’s your comprehensive guides, original research, or how-to articles, for example. Then, focus your content creation on those high-performing formats.
• Improve content quality. Citations tend to link to authoritative, well-researched content with clear explanations and reliable data. Amp up your content with better sources, more comprehensive coverage, and clearer structure to increase citation potential.

5. AI Rankings

AI rankings show where in the response your brand appears when AI platforms list multiple options. Unlike traditional SEO rankings for specific keywords, AI rankings track your position in prompts where you're mentioned alongside competitors.

Your AI rankings help you see your overall competitive positioning in AI responses. When someone asks "What are the best project management tools?" and you rank third in the AI-generated list, that's your AI ranking for that prompt.

Semrush Enterprise AIO's AI Rankings report shows ranking data including the number of prompts you're ranking for, prompt trends (percent growth or loss), average position changes, and how your rankings spread across different positions.

You can also see your brand’s rankings among your competitors to help you see where you rank among the competition.

How to use AI rankings data in your LLMO strategy:

• Target ranking improvements. Focus on prompts where you show up but don’t rank at the top, as these might be easier to improve than breaking into the top 3 from outside the rankings entirely.
• Study top performers. Analyze competitors who consistently rank in positions 1-2 for your target prompts. What content formats, topics, or approaches make them AI platforms' preferred recommendations?
• Track position trends. Monitor whether your average positions improve over time as you implement LLMO strategies. Consistent ranking improvements indicate your optimization efforts are working the way you want them to.

6. AI Sentiment

AI sentiment measures how AI platforms describe and position your brand in their responses. Unlike user-generated sentiment from reviews or social media, this tracks the tone and context AI tools use when mentioning your brand.

This metric will tell you whether AI platforms present your brand positively, negatively, or neutrally to users. When someone asks about solutions in your industry, does the AI describe you as a "leading provider" or mention limitations and drawbacks?

Semrush Enterprise AIO's Sentiment Analysis shows how many positive, negative, and neutral mentions you have. It also shows a trend over time so you can watch to see if you’re improving your sentiment, and a brand leaderboard to see how you compare to competitors in terms of your numbers of positive/negative/neutral mentions.

How to use AI sentiment in your LLMO strategy:

• Monitor sentiment shifts. Track whether your positive sentiment percentage increases over time as you improve content quality and brand messaging across all of your channels.
• Address negative patterns. If negative sentiment increases, investigate which topics or contexts trigger those unfavorable mentions, then create content to address those specific concerns or misconceptions.
• Benchmark against competitors. Compare your sentiment distribution to industry leaders to identify gaps in how AI platforms perceive and present your brand versus your top competitors.

7. AI Referral Traffic

AI referral traffic measures your actual website visits generated from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. This important metric tells you how much actual traffic your website is getting from AI platforms.

Unlike visibility metrics that show brand mentions, referral traffic shows whether that AI visibility converts into website engagement. However, keep in mind that you might have high AI visibility but low referral traffic if AI responses often fully answer user questions without driving clicks.

You can track AI referral traffic in Google Analytics 4 by creating a custom report or custom channel group with AI platforms as sources. Set up custom reports to identify visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and other AI domains. This shows your direct traffic impact from AI mentions and citations.

But where can you see how much AI traffic your competitors get?

For that, we’ll use Semrush's Traffic & Market Toolkit. In the AI Traffic dashboard, you can compare your traffic from all the top AI sources with your competitors:

This addresses a key gap in standard analytics tools–you can see your own AI traffic in GA4, but Semrush shows you how competitors perform across AI platforms.

How to use AI referral traffic data in your LLMO strategy:

• Connect AI visibility to traffic. Track whether improvements in AI mentions and rankings translate into increased website traffic. If visibility grows but traffic doesn't, try optimizing more for citations.
• Identify high-converting AI platforms. Some AI platforms might drive more traffic than others, and some might send more engaged traffic than others. Focus your optimization efforts on the platforms that generate traffic from users that end up engaging with your website.
• Optimize for click-through intent. Take a look at the articles that are currently getting cited by AI and sending traffic to your website. Optimize for more click-throughs like those by creating content that AI platforms are likely to cite. Focus on answers that spark curiosity and naturally encourage readers to click through for more details from you.

8. AI Conversions

AI conversions track goal completions and key events from visitors who arrive at your site through clicks on AI platforms. This metric shows the ultimate value of your AI visibility by measuring how AI-driven traffic converts into leads, sales, or other desired actions.

Tracking conversions from AI platforms can help you figure out the true return on investment (ROI) of your LLMO efforts. High AI visibility doesn’t mean much if it never leads to meaningful interactions with your business.

Using the same GA4 setup for tracking AI referral traffic, check to see if that traffic is leading to any key events:

How to use AI conversion data in your LLMO strategy:

• Optimize high-converting AI referrers. Focus your LLMO efforts on AI platforms and content types that drive the highest-converting traffic.
• Improve conversion experiences. If AI visitors have lower conversion rates than search visitors, optimize landing pages and user flows specifically for the mindset of users coming from AI platforms.
• Measure LLMO ROI. Track conversion value from AI sources over time to keep tabs on the ROI of your AI optimization efforts and justify continued investment in LLMO strategies.

AI Visibility Measuring Tools: A Quick Comparison

Multiple tools now offer AI visibility tracking, each with different strengths and pricing models. Here's how the leading platforms compare across key metrics:

Tool	AI Platforms Covered	Key Metrics	Best For	Starting Price
Semrush Enterprise AIO	ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, Gemini	Share of voice, brand visibility, sentiment, rankings, citations	Enterprise teams, competitive analysis	Custom pricing
Semrush AI Toolkit	ChatGPT, SearchGPT, Gemini, Perplexity	Brand performance, visibility, perception, questions	Small-mid size businesses	$99/month
Rankscale	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI	Performance tracking, site auditing, competitor benchmarking	Small businesses, budget-conscious teams	$20/month
Profound	Major AI platforms	Visibility tracking, competitive intelligence, custom dashboards	Large enterprises, agencies	$499/month
HubSpot AI Search Grader	ChatGPT, Google AI	Basic brand sentiment, share of voice scoring	Initial assessments, small businesses	Free
Otterly AI	ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity	Share of voice, mention tracking, historical data	Mid-size companies, competitive positioning	$27/month

If you’re not measuring how visible your business is on AI platforms, you’re missing that insight into how users from this newest source interact with your business. Start tracking and optimizing for those visits now, because AI platforms will continue growing their influence over customer research and purchasing decisions.

If you’re an enterprise team managing multiple brands or operating in highly competitive markets, a platform like Semrush Enterprise AIO will give you the competitive intelligence, AI-generated recommendations, and detailed analytics needed to dominate AI visibility across all the major platforms.